Guide to the Lotte Jacobi Papers, 1898-2000

Collection number: MC 58
Size: 72 boxes
(24 cu.ft.)

About Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990)

The photographer Johanna Alexandra Jacobi Reiss, affectionately known as Lotte, was
born in Thorn, West Prussia in 1896 in what is now Poland. When she was two years
old, her family moved to nearby Posen. In 1916, Lotte married and a year later gave
birth to a son, John. After Posen became part of Poland in 1921, the Jacobi family
moved to Berlin, Germany, where, after a long separation, Lotte’s marriage ended in
1924. Directly after the divorce, she began her film and camera work, studying film
at the University of Munich, while simultaneously attending the Bavarian State
Academy of Photography.

Photography ran in the Jacobi family. Lotte’s great-grandfather, Samuel Jacobi,
visited Paris between 1839 and 1842, where he obtained a camera, a license, and some
instruction from L.J.M. Daguerre and then returned to Thorn to set up a studio. He
prospered at his trade and eventually passed the business on to his son, Alexander.
Alexander, in turn, handed the business down to his three sons, the eldest of whom
was Lotte’s father, Sigismund. Thus, there was always the expectation that Lotte and
her sister, Ruth (a brother, Alexander, died at age 20), would continue the family
business. With such a heritage, Lotte once commented, “I was to be a photographer
and that was that.”

After completing her formal studies, Jacobi entered the family business in 1927.
During this same period (1926-27) she began her professional work as a photographer,
and she also produced four films, the most important being “Portrait of the Artist,”
a study of Josef Scharl. From October of 1932 to January of 1933, Lotte traveled to
the Soviet Union, in particular to Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan, taking photographs of
what she saw. She returned to Berlin in February 1933, one month after Hitler came
to power. As persecution against Jews increased, Lotte left Germany with her son,
arriving in New York City in September 1935 where she opened a studio in Manhattan.
In 1940, Lotte married Erich Reiss, a distinguished German publisher and writer, a
marriage that lasted until his death in 1951. During this time, she continued
portrait photography at her studio, while also embarking upon an experimental type
of photographic work that artist Leo Katz later named photogenics.

In 1955, Lotte left New York with her son and daughter-in-law and moved to Deering,
New Hampshire, a move that changed her life. There she opened a new studio, where
she both continued her own work and displayed works by other artists. She became
interested in politics and was a fervent Democrat, representing New Hampshire at the
Democratic National Convention in 1980. She traveled extensively (in the U.S.,
Europe, and Peru) and enjoyed new-found fame in the 1970s and 1980s. She died in
1990 at the age of 93.

Lotte Jacobi is best known for her photographic portraits, which act as a “chronicle
of an era.” The list of her subjects reads like a who’s who of the 20th century:
W.H. Auden, Martin Buber, Marc Chagall, W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, Robert
Frost, Käthe Kollwitz, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Thomas Mann, Max Planck, Eleanor
Roosevelt, J.D. Salinger, Alfred Stieglitz, and Chaim Weizmann – to name but a few.
During her lifetime she received numerous honors and was recognized as the “greatest
woman photographer of the twentieth century”.

About the Lotte Jacobi Papers

The Lotte Jacobi Collection was donated to the University of New Hampshire in 1985.
Additional material was donated in 2001 by Irma and Mordecai Bauman and by Beatrice
Trum Hunter. The Lotte Jacobi Collection consists of correspondence spanning the
years 1924-1986, personal files, daybooks, account books, exhibition information,
scrapbooks, biographical information, inscribed works given to Lotte by authors and
poets, hundreds of family snapshots, and numerous photographs given to Lotte by
other distinguished photographers.

Before her death, she bequeathed 47,000 negatives, several hundred study and
exhibition prints, three portfolios, letters, catalogues, documents, and other
printed material to UNH. For information about licensing images taken by Lotte
Jacobi, please contact Beth Sheckler, Licensing Manager of Creative and Digital
Works, UNHInnovation, 603-862-1291 or email beth.sheckler@unh.edu.

Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

This collection is open.

Copyright Notice

Contents of this collection are governed by U.S. copyright law. For information
about licensing the Lotte Jacobi images, please contact Beth Sheckler, Licensing
Manager of Creative and Digital Works, UNHInnovation, 603-862-1291 or email
beth.sheckler@unh.edu .

Huebsch-van Hyning, 1958-1980 [folder contains correspondence with Gordon
Humphrey, US Senator from New Hampshire (4 letters); and Hubert H.
Humphrey, US Senator from Minnesota, Vice-President of the United States
under Lyndon B. Johnson, and Democratic candidate for President, 1968 (1
letter)]

Grossman, Henryk, "The Evolutionist Revolt Against Classical
Economics, Part I: In France - Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Simonde De
Sismondi." The Journal of Political
Economy, Vol. LI Number 5, October 1943, pp. 381-396

Kowski, Erwin, two issues of Der Westpreusse, 8 and 22, January, 1983. The latter has an article
on Kowski [in German] on page 6. The former has Kowski's drawing of his
wife on cover page.

Box 47, Folder 17

LaVilla - Havelin, Jim, poem: "Three Portraits" (the third of
which is "Jacobi's Robert Frost," Nov
1980

Box 47, Folder 18

McGinn, Jack, cartoon illustration of Jacobi on the floor of the
Wall Street Stock Exchange, May 19,
1938; newspaper clipping of a photo taken by Jacobi of
the floor of the Exchange from the New York
Herald Tribune, Sunday, Nov
27, 1938

Series XII: Miscellaneous

Beatrice Trum Hunter was a public school teacher and author of the first
natural food cookbook in America. She wrote many books and articles
crusading for organic food. Her professional materials are preserved in
Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. Beatrice’s
relationship to this collection is that she was Lotte Jacobi’s
ex-daughter-in-law. She spent years with Lotte and in later years became
Lotte’s caretaker.

Box 64

Biographical material and obituaries for Lotte Jacobi;
correspondence to and from Lotte, materials about Lotte’s career (some
in german); Misc. photos of Lotte 1967 – 1988; preliminary translation
of the book “Russland 1932/33 : Moskau, Tadschikistan, Usbekistan”.

Box 65

Biographical material and obituaries for Beatrice Trum Hunter;
correspondence to and from Beatrice Trum Hunter; from the UNH Media
Services there is correspondence on where Lotte Jacobi images are being
used; a few notes on the of making of the “Lotte Jacobi: a Film
Portrait” produced by UNH with copies of it on compact disc and VHS
tape.

Series XIV: Oversized Material

(10 Oversized Boxes)

Subseries A: Personal Files

Oversize Box 1

Awards (plaques, certificates,
etc.)

Oversize Box 2

Approximately 100 sketches (possibly drafts for
her photogenics, in which case they would likely date from the early
1950s) and 35 prints likely made from the copper engravings in Box
63 above by Lotte Jacobi, not dated